Book Report - The Most Notorious Talker Runs the World's Greatest Clan Book 1 (translated) by Jaki

Originally Published: Sept. 26, 2023, 1:32 p.m. Last updated: Sept. 26, 2023, 1:32 p.m.

Tags: books

I'll preface by saying that I haven't settled on how spoiler-free I keep the language yet. I was trying to be purposely vague on Fourth Wing since that's kind of blowing up right now and I can see people wanting to go check it out, but I'm going to go into a bit more detail for this one.

Trigger warning for this book: there's a lot of sexual assault in the backstories for a lot of these characters.

As is common for Japanese-origin light novels, the title gives you the basic shpiel. In a world where you inherently have a class that determines your strength, skills, aptitudes, and so on, our main character, Noel Stollen, is a Talker, very similar in concept to a D&D Bard. The class lets him buff allies and debuff enemies with his voice, and not much else. He aims to follow in his Grandfather's footsteps and become the greatest Seeker (essentially Adventurer in other settings) in the world. His Grandfather was a Warrior though, so this is easier said than done given the limitations of the Talker class.

The setting here is roughly a grim-dark Victorian-era fantasy story. We've got guns, but not cars and electronics. We've got magic, gear, skill books, gangs, violence, slavery, murder, bandits, monsters, dungeons (called Abysses), corruption, bureaucracy and much more. Talker's plots and backstories are often over-the-top edgy and have Noel portrayed as the coolest thing ever. It's enjoyable but also a bit exhausting if you let yourself think to deeply about it. Character A? Product of sexual assault. Character B? Maybe sexual assault. Character C? Grandmother rescued from sexual assault. Talker tries to make it very clear that this is not a kind world, but it does so in a very hamfisted way.

Noel is portrayed as the best possible person for a world like this. He's absurdly dedicated to his goal, he's the most persistent person ever, he's able to think clearly at all times, he's super smart, he's ruthless and cold (this one can't be overstated, he's absolutely vicious) any time he needs to be, but he's nice to anyone that hasn't wronged him. He's very much a Mary Sue apart from the limitations of his class. Again, enjoyable to read but exhausting to think about too much.

Book 1 manages to get through ~2½ story arcs as it aims to start setting up Noel's Seeker party, the people he'll be taking missions with. Each of them follows a basic story cadence: Set up a basic premise; a twist causes trouble; Noel comes out on top thanks to being super smart, super well prepared, and super vicious. Frankly it's a bit reminiscent of slimmed down Sherlock Holmes conclusions, but not in a bad way. Coming off of many other stories with more milquetoast main characters, Noel's pragmatism comes off as refreshing. There are bad people we let get away because they can still be useful. There are bad people we do nothing about because they're too strong for us right now. There are bad people we deal with immediately because they've wronged us too much or they're a threat. We bluff here because we need to stall or we're out of our depth. We threaten here to push our way through an obstacle.

I've made multiple references to D&D tropes already, and I think the comparison is relevant to keep going with. Suppose you had a transcript of how a D&D game was going. One of our characters is a Bard with a very edgy backstory. He acts as the party's face and leader and constantly steals the spotlight from everyone else. He's maxed out every stat on his character sheet (even strength, he works out), he rolls really well all the time, he's spent his money on OP gear, and the DM often tilts luck in his favor. The DM keeps throwing grim-dark/edgy encounters at him and he comes out of all of them with more than he started with. It's a fun romp, but any tension you feel is lost pretty quickly if you let yourself notice the pattern.

All in all I enjoyed the story enough that I'll likely continue the series once I've cleared more of my reading backlog, but I'm not running out to the store right now to get the next book in the series.